Menu Next Door offers access to home-cooked meals, but on your own time

In recent months, we have seen the emergence of a few platforms that enable people to cook a meal and invite others over to enjoy it. But for those who would like a home-cooked meal, but may be a bit shy or simply want to enjoy the food into the comfort of their own homes, Belgian startup Menu Next Door has you covered.

I wanted to see how the service works, so I did a sample search and found that users are presented with list of options for each day of the week, depending on who has decided to cook what. It does not seem possible to search for a specific type of cuisine, but each day offers 1-3 (or more) choices, with some chefs preparing a main dish, as well as dessert. Profiles for that meal include a photo of the chef, the ingredients, a catchy name for the dish, a figure indicating how many have ordered it (they do sell out), a figure indicating how many are left, the distance from your location, the price, and a button for ordering. And there is a button for posing a question to the chef, as well. Having decided on a meal, the site offers the option of indicating how many portions you want, as well as the time you at which you would like to pick the meal up. The profiles offer a map with an indication of the pickup-location, but the exact address is only revealed after an order is made.

Menu Next Door does not generate revenue at the moment, but, like many startups involved with facilitating transactions, they are planning to unveil a commission-based model, with the fee likely to be about 10%.
Menu Next Door has just obtained seed funding, to the tune of 1.75 million Euro, and now claims Kima Ventures, Local Globe, Index Ventures, and TheFamily as backers. They began operations in Brussels, where they have 55,000 users, in May 2015 and in Paris, where they have another 55,000 users, in January 2016, but they now intend to use the funding to continue its plans to expand in Europe. The most recent development on this front was when the platform launched in London on May 20.